A wide variety of non-Internet email address formats were used in early email systems before the ubiquity of the ''[email protected]'' form used by

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

mail systems since the 1980s - and a few are still used in specialised contexts.

Single system

The earliest email addresses simply had to identify one user from another on one homogenous system, often a single host

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

. They were therefore typically the user's login name on that system. Examples of this style include: * ATS: ''123'' *

CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...

: ''432654,6564'' * MCI Mail: ''373-1994'' * AOL: ''Steve Case''

At a host

As computer systems became networked email addresses needed to be able to identify not only the user, but also which host or mail system they were on. Addresses of this type were used in a number of early email systems, including: *

ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical foun ...

: ''jim@washington'' * PROFS: ''userid@node'' * DECnet: ''host::user'' (e.g. DECWRL::WRL-TECHREPORTS) * cc:Mail: ''John Alexopoulos at MicroCircuits'' * MHS: Barry@MICROSOFT

Delivery path

Some email address schemes described the ''path'' through multiple hosts needed to deliver email. This worked well only if the first host given in the path was sufficiently well known for the sender's system to be able to contact it. *

UUCP UUCP is an acronym of Unix-to-Unix Copy. The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers. A command named is one of the ...

" bang path": ''reed!percival!bucket!lisag'' ( example on a business card)

Hierarchical

Hierarchical addressing schemes are naturally able to expand. The modern Internet email address (e.g. ''[email protected]''), is of this type - but it was also used by a number of early systems, including: * Banyan VINES: ''Ed Hirsch@Faculty@Univ'' * Grey Book: ''[email protected]'' * FidoNET: ''lenz @ 2:331:113.1'' *

Lotus Notes HCL Notes (formerly IBM Notes and Lotus Notes; see Branding below) and HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino and Lotus Domino) are the client and server, respectively, of a collaborative client-server software platform formerly sold by IBM, now by HCL ...

: '' Tyler Hamilton/Sales@Europe''

Directory systems

In this type of system, there is no one unique address for a specific user, but instead a series of attributes, not all of which may be needed to identify the user. For convenience however, there may be recommended formats for sharing on business cards and similar contexts, such as: *

X.400 X.400 is a suite of ITU-T Recommendations that defines the ITU-T Message Handling System (MHS). At one time, the designers of X.400 were expecting it to be the predominant form of email, but this role has been taken by the SMTP-based Internet e-m ...

: ''C=no;ADMD= ;PRMD=uninett;O=sintef;OU=delab;S=Alvestrand;G=Harald''"Short Hand X.400 Address Notation"
1989, RARE/CERN

References

{{reflist, 30em Email